The Petrakos Bride

by Lynne Graham

  ‘I’m sure it will.’ But Maddie was not prepared to back down. If Giannis was determined to marry her, he would have to make choices too. He could not have everything his way.

  ‘What sort of a financial figure do you have in mind as a disincentive to a straying husband?’ he enquired.

  ‘A figure that would hurt.’

  The lawyer could hardly wait to lay that tantalising and explosive prospect before the haughty Petrakos legal team, who had made it clear that they expected the pre-nup to be signed immediately and without even a minor quibble. He wondered which fall guy would get the thankless task of briefing Giannis Petrakos on his bride-to-be’s punitive take on adultery.

  After his departure, Maddie went for a walk in the grounds of the house. Harriston Hall was a very comfortable Edwardian mansion that had been remodelled so extensively inside that very little of the original property remained. It was as sumptuous as a hotel, and its staff could not do enough to make her feel comfortable. After several nights of undisturbed sleep and regular meals, her bone-deep tiredness and almost all the sickness had gradually faded away. She was feeling healthier and stronger. Since she had left London she had seen Giannis only once, and that had been in the first few days when he had flown in for lunch en route for Brussels. Her coolness had washed off him like ice-cream left out in the sun. He had nerves of steel. But she was pretty certain that the clause she wanted inserted in the pre-nup would bring Giannis down to visit again. She was looking forward to that prospect…

  That evening, Maddie was enjoying a long, lazy soak in her en-suite bathroom when a sharp knock sounded on the door. She sat up with a start, water sloshing noisily around her. ‘Yes?’ she called out.

  ‘It’s Giannis…’ The door swung open.

  Maddie let out a muffled shriek and crossed her arms over her rounded tummy. ‘Don’t you dare come in!’

  ‘Don’t keep me waiting,’ Giannis intoned. ‘Can you manage on your own? Or would you like me to play lady’s maid?’

  ‘I’m not the size of a house yet!’ Maddie exclaimed, standing up, water streaming off her in rivulets as she snatched frantically at a towel. She got a glimpse of herself in the mirror and very nearly groaned out loud. She was pink all over, like a freshly boiled lobster, and her mass of curls was anchored to the top of her head by a lime-green clip in the shape of a dog.

  From the other side of the bedroom Giannis studied her as she emerged, swathed from neck to toe in a very large towel. The silence literally screamed.

  ‘If you give me five minutes, I’ll get dressed,’ she told him in a rush.

  ‘In those rags?’ Giannis scooped up the shortie pyjamas lying on the bed, and tossed them down again in contemptuous dismissal. The sight of that familiar set acted as an inflammatory reminder of Morocco, where matters had swung from paradise to hell and out of his control. ‘You reject everything I give you…you reject who I am!’

  Maddie gulped. ‘I—’

  ‘What interest have you even taken in your own wedding?’ His complete incomprehension on that score was as palpable as the truth that he had been deeply offended by her display of uninterest. ‘If you ruin it, you can’t have it over again!’

  Maddie found herself squirming. The flash of masculine bewilderment she recognised in his penetrating gaze made her feel bad. Her sole intent had been to demonstrate to him that she wasn’t prepared to act the joyful bride when she had given her consent under duress. But hadn’t she already decided that she would marry him anyway? Was it his fault he hadn’t appreciated that she had no intention of letting him go free? And was she prepared to let her pride spoil her wedding day?

  ‘But what I cannot excuse is that you should choose to denounce my standards of behaviour through my own lawyers!’ Giannis raked at her in condemnation. ‘How could you do that?’

  CHAPTER NINE

  HIS strong face clenched, Giannis was even angrier than Maddie had anticipated.

  ‘I thought it was okay to say anything I liked to a solicitor hired to represent my interests.’

  ‘What gave you that idea?’ Giannis challenged, without skipping a beat ‘The word “anything” covers a lot of ground that I would not have taken into the public arena!’

  ‘Well, you didn’t have a problem with me being told that if our marriage broke up you would get to keep the children,’ Maddie reminded him. ‘How much more personal can you get?’

  Giannis stilled for a moment in his restive passage round the spacious room and shot her a dark-as-midnight glance that revealed nothing. ‘That is not the point.’

  ‘It’s exactly the point,’ she declared. ‘That was a major part of the pre-nuptial agreement. Yet you didn’t see any need to discuss those terms with me in private beforehand. Of course you don’t discuss anything.’

  Even though he was well aware of his evasive tactics in that department, Giannis growled, ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘How dare you let your lawyers sit and talk over how I’m going to lose my children when you’re the one most likely to wreck the marriage in the first place!’

  At that ringing indictment of his character, dulled coins of colour accentuated the superb line of his classic Petrakos cheekbones. ‘I don’t accept that.’

  ‘Marriage is something that I take very seriously.’ Maddie lifted her chin.

  His dark eyes had the icy glitter of stars, and she knew his temper was under wraps again. ‘As do I…hence the pre-nup. But I take very strong exception to the demands that you saw fit to voice through your lawyer!’

  ‘You didn’t give me much of a choice about marrying you, but at least I have more sense than to go plunging into it without foreseeing the pitfalls and trying to avoid them!’ Maddie launched back at him with conviction.

  ‘But all you ever see is pitfalls and problems! What happened to trust and optimism? I believe that I will be an exceptional husband.’ Giannis slung that assurance back at her without hesitation, for he had spent every free moment during the past ten days trying to decide on the wedding details that she had yet to show the smallest interest in. ‘But face it now…I will not stoop to sign an agreement which tries to tell me what I can and cannot do in my life!’

  ‘Has anyone ever tried to impose boundaries on you?’ Maddie was genuinely curious on that score, because it seemed to her that Giannis had always done exactly as he liked while utterly refusing to acknowledge his mistakes.

  His stubborn jaw line squared. ‘I have complete faith in my ability to choose my own boundaries,’ he spelt out grittily.

  ‘Do you think that attitude might possibly explain why you’re now on the brink of a shotgun marriage?’ Maddie dared, fighting back with all her might. ‘Engaged to one woman, sleeping with another? It was a recipe for disaster.’

  Pure outrage at that unbelievably tactless reminder assailed Giannis. His golden eyes smouldered like the heart of a fire, his ferocious pride stung. ‘I will not discuss this with you any more,’ he framed thickly, striding towards the door. ‘I cannot—’

  ‘Yes, you can,’ Maddie protested, dismayed that he was planning to walk out on her.

  ‘You are a pregnant woman and you shouldn’t be getting upset. I can’t argue with you like this!’

  Pregnant or not, Maddie made it to the door ahead of him. She plastered her back to it and spread her arms as if she was ready to barricade him in and hold him prisoner if necessary. ‘Don’t be daft…of course you can argue with me! I’m tough. I can take it. What do you think I’m made of? Glass?’

  ‘Glorious curves.’ His masculine attention was unashamedly locked to her voluptuous shape. As she’d raced across the room her towel had slid down several inches, and the luscious swell of her creamy breasts was now shockingly prominent over its fleecy edge.

  Maddie met his stunning eyes and a wicked little coil of heat spread wanton fingers of awareness through all the tender, responsive parts of her body. Knowing that if she stayed there one second longer Giannis would be more than
willing to employ sex as a distraction, she stepped away from the door and put some sensible space between them.

  ‘We don’t have to argue…we just need to talk,’ Maddie reasoned soothingly.

  Giannis didn’t want to talk. He just wanted to take her towel off and sink himself into her delicious pink and white body until the tumult of his irate thoughts stilled and the tormenting ache of lust was quenched.

  ‘Please don’t go,’ Maddie urged, desperate to keep him with her. ‘I really do want our marriage to work.’

  A tiny amount of his sceptical tension ebbed, and he swung back to face her again.

  ‘You see…it’s not a matter of anyone trying to tell you what to do. You picked that up all wrong,’ she assured him winningly. ‘I know that wouldn’t work.’

  Giannis felt reassured enough to let his rigid shoulders rest back against the solid wood door.

  ‘I mean, the way I see it the choice is all yours. We can have a marriage that’s just a façade—’

  A slight frown began to divide his sleek ebony brows again. ‘A façade?’

  ‘For the sake of the children. We’d share everything to do with them and you could do as you liked with other women.’

  Giannis tensed. He didn’t know what she was about to say next. Knowing her views, he was extremely suspicious of such uncritical candour. She had also managed to make that option sound sleazy rather than liberated. ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘Well, it would be sort of marriage-lite, as I see it. We’d pretty much lead separate lives.’

  ‘Separate?’ Giannis was getting disturbing vibes about the offer of marriage-lite, as she called it. It sounded like a poisoned chalice.

  Maddie flushed. ‘Well, obviously we wouldn’t be sharing a bedroom—’

  Giannis shook his arrogant dark head in instantaneous rejection. ‘Sounds more like marriage-hell than marriage-lite. Don’t ever take a job as a saleswoman.’

  ‘But if you can’t commit to fidelity that sort of marriage will suit you best.’

  Giannis stretched back against the door like a hungry predator, wakening to find a three-course lunch parading past. His brilliant eyes gleamed.

  His silence put Maddie more on edge. ‘There would be obvious benefits. At least we’d be accepting each other as we are.’

  ‘Me the eternal sinner and you the suffering saint of restraint?’ Giannis quipped with rich cynicism

  ‘No. Eventually we’d forget…well, you know…that we had ever slept together,’ she muttered self-consciously. ‘And then we’d be able to be friends.’

  Giannis shook his handsome head in vehement rejection of that hope, and jerked his thumb down like a Roman emperor ordering the death penalty. ‘I take it option two is following my marriage vows or being fined millions and millions for breaking your rules?’

  Maddie winced. ‘That’s a very emotive way of putting it.’

  ‘How would you describe it, glikia mou?’

  ‘I just need you to take marrying me seriously,’ she admitted.

  ‘Marriage-heavy?’ Giannis breathed in silken derision. ‘If I do as I’m told, you’ll condescend to share my bed? Forget it…Greece doesn’t breed wimps who let their women call the shots.’

  ‘Where is it written that a Greek tycoon has to have a mistress?’ Maddie suddenly launched at him in furious frustration. ‘Aren’t I enough for you? How would you feel if I got another man?’

  All pretence of relaxation banished, Giannis flipped away from the doorframe and strode forward, dark eyes bright with aggression. ‘Don’t even think about it. I wouldn’t tolerate even a flirtation. Not for one moment!’

  Maddie sent him a winging glance. ‘I won’t make the obvious comment.’

  ‘Theos mou…are you calling me a hypocrite?’

  ‘I don’t suppose it much matters—since we probably won’t be getting married now anyway. After all, it doesn’t look like either of us is going to sign that pre-nup.’ There was a tiny catch in Maddie’s voice, for it was not the conclusion she had dimly envisaged. Unfortunately she had not thought through to the likely end result of her strategy. Why hadn’t it occurred to her that she was dealing with a virile male to whom machismo was a matter of pride and honour? There she had been, thinking she was so smart, but she had boxed herself into a corner with her own options.

  In the uneasy silence Giannis expelled his breath on a slow hiss. Darkly handsome features bleak, he surveyed her with level deep-set eyes that had an extraordinary intensity. He wasn’t backing down; he never backed down.

  Without another word he walked out of the room. He took the stairs two at a time and called for the limo to be brought round. While he waited he poured a brandy. He was so angry he paced the room like a tiger trapped in a cage. When he was told that the car was waiting, he found himself reluctant to take advantage of it. He had come down to stay the night, and he would stay. She was the one who ran away from problems. He frowned. Had she had any other choice? He had put too much pressure on her and damaged her ability to trust him. Was it fair to blame her for that? He no longer had a mistress in his life.

  Giannis brooded on his ferocious dissatisfaction over a second brandy, and soon found more suitable culprits to hold responsible. It was the lawyers who had brought them to this unhappy pass! How could Maddie understand an agreement which had primarily been designed to protect his great wealth? She hadn’t a greedy bone in her body. She was the only woman he had ever met who ignored his riches and dealt with him as a man. That might often have proved to be an uncomfortable experience, but she was not the potential gold-digger that the pre-nup had been drawn up to frustrate. Nor, he was convinced, would she ever do anything to harm their children.

  He wondered if she was aware that the history of marriage in the Petrakos clan was a long and unhappy one. Bitter divorces, court battles for custody and explosive scandal had dogged every generation but one. His great-grandparents had been the last happily married couple in his immediate family. Rodas Petrakos had married his childhood sweetheart, Dorkas, in the teeth of all opposition. There had been no pre-nup and, although by all accounts it had been a volatile marriage, the couple had stayed together. Along the way both parties must have made compromises and trade-offs, but the legal profession had been kept out of it. Perhaps, Giannis decided, it was unwise to allow such private matters to be dealt with by third parties. In fact perhaps all that talk of negative expectations had merely made Maddie feel threatened, insecure and unappreciated.

  When a knock sounded on the door, Maddie pulled herself awkwardly up against the pillows. ‘Yes?’

  Giannis strolled in, shorn of his jacket and tie, his blue designer shirt open at his strong brown throat.

  Maddie blinked in surprise, for she had heard the limo driving round from the garage block and had honestly believed that he was gone. ‘You’re still here?’

  Giannis inclined his arrogant dark head. ‘I have an early flight tomorrow. It would make no sense to leave. Even I need to sleep.’

  ‘Oh.’ It dawned on her that her eyes had to be pink and swollen, because she had been crying, but mercifully he was not looking directly at her. Indeed he seemed to be extremely interested in the carved post at the foot of the bed. ‘Is there something up?’

  His proud dark head came up at that enquiry, liquid golden eyes wary beneath the heavy fringe of his spiky lashes. ‘No, but I have reached a decision. We will dispense with the pre-nuptial agreement. It is surplus to requirements.’

  She had breathed in deep when he said he had reached a decision, bracing herself as if she was waiting for the roof to fall down and crush her. But when he mentioned dispensing with the agreement she was bemused. She almost parted her lips to ask about the marriage choices she had offered, and then she sealed them shut again. Was he avoiding the issue? Saving face? Or still thinking his options over? Why not get him past the altar and then settle down into reforming him from the ground up? It was a low, sneaky thought, and she was ashamed of herself,
but she was fast reaching the conclusion that direct confrontation was unproductive. He was an Alpha male high-achiever, programmed to compete and fight when challenged. She needed to be more subtle. After all, no matter how annoyed she got with him, she loved him to bits and knew all too well how unhappy she would be without him.

  ‘All right…’ Maddie agreed, her attention lingering on the blue-black shadow of stubble darkening his strong jawline. He looked drop-dead gorgeous, and her pulses quickened along with her heartbeat. ‘You need a shave. You look like a pirate,’ she added without thinking.

  Relief that he was not being greeted with a barrage of questions brought a smile of amusement to his handsome mouth. ‘I do have a yacht.’

  ‘I saw it on television,’ she confessed.

  A sleek ebony brow elevated in polite surprise. ‘How? When?’

  Maddie went pink and grimaced. ‘After I got back from Morocco I saw a documentary about you and Krista.’

  ‘You watched that tacky programme?’ Giannis demanded.

  Maddie nodded ruefully.

  His tension dropped yet another notch. Now he knew why she saw him as a womaniser. No wonder his marriage proposal had got a cool reception, he reflected, glad to have that egozapping truth clarified. ‘It was full of nonsensical errors and wild exaggerations about my lifestyle. I was misrepresented.’

  ‘All those supermodels?’

  ‘I’ve moved on from that stage in my life,’ Giannis drawled with supreme cool.

  Maddie knew that she could not compare to such women, and she tried hard to avoid that train of thought. She could see little point in bemoaning the reality that she was not taller, thinner, more traffic-stoppingly good-looking. In choosing his companions from the ranks of the most beautiful women available he had only done what other rich young men tended to do. But it was difficult to avoid the reflection that he was only with her because she had conceived his children.

  Giannis was noticing the pale purplish shadows below her reddened eyes. Exhaustion and strain were etched in her pallor, and suddenly he was furious with himself, not only for allowing her to get in that condition but also for contributing to her distress. ‘It’s the early hours of the morning, pedhi mou,’ he murmured quietly. ‘You should be resting.’